2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHow Scott Walker operates - an excellent case study
From the editor of the Cap Times, Madison, Wisconsin:
Paul Fanlund: Linking a $300-million UW budget cut to flexibility is preposterous. January 29, 2015
Yes, our administration cut taxes last term, mostly to benefit the higher-income GOP base. That overreach helped us manufacture another $2-billion budget shortfall for the two-year period that begins July 1. But thats how we roll: Create a crisis and solve it with still more spending cuts.
To help us this time, lets stick it to a favorite target: the University of Wisconsin System. After chopping UW System support in our first four years, lets go for another draconian reduction of $300 million, or 13 percent, over two years, the largest cut in UW history. So how do we camouflage what it really is: part of a fundamental and ideological assault on the availability and affordability of public education in Wisconsin, from kindergarten through graduate school?
Lets trot out, under the always handy guise of reform, a proposal to permit UW leaders greater autonomy, and argue that the new freedom will allow them to get out from under the thumb of state government. As a tactic, we first leak to the media that the governor intends to propose a bold plan to grant more autonomy to UW. That sounds good, and presents Walker as someone who thinks big and does not, say, need the more deliberative advice of a bipartisan, blue-ribbon commission to study the future of higher education in Wisconsin. That would be better for the state, but does not fit the presidential campaign timetable.
Well played, governor.
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Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)when it came to placing graduates. With these wackes we can only see some real placement issues coming soon. Young people are not stupid when it comes to selecting College Education,it's all about were and when can I get hired. There is a selection process used by Upper Midwest Corporate America and the Big Ten rules the roost with Wisconsin and Michigan at the top.
Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)I like the set up on the autonomy issue. By manipulating the presentation of the "gift" and slashing the budget. The newly freed UW admins have no choice but to respond along a single path.
Limiting tenure and using more adjunct professors.
Raising tuition (although UW has said they won't., but for how long?)
It is just another attack on education. Keep the commoners simple...it's for their own good.
lutefisk
(3,974 posts)Control of the UW System (including things like tenure, work load, working conditions) goes from the state to the UW System Board of Regents. With 16 out of 18 members appointed by Walker it's pretty much game over.
unionthug777
(740 posts)he wants to "privatize" the UW system to give to his corporate masters.
a kennedy
(29,699 posts)Pakid
(478 posts)And as we all know America has more than it share of Idiots!